


What We Need Is a Distraction

by ncfan



Series: Game Night in Cell Block A [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Awkward situations, Canon Speculation, Coda, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Gen, Imperial Supercommandos Coda, Introspection, Missing Scene, POV Female Character, Wakes & Funerals, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 10:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10003226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Of everything Sabine might have expected to happen when Rau joined the Rebellion, her standing watch while he buried a set of armor wasn't one of them. [Coda to 'Imperial Supercommandos.']





	

**Author's Note:**

> This work serves as a coda to the episode 'Imperial Supercommandos' and to the fic series it's a part of.

Sabine couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so incredibly awkward as she did right now. Sure, she’d been in plenty of awkward situations, and sure she had felt awkward (The first time she had seen Ketsu after their long separation sprang to mind, as did her and Rex going to Kanan about modifying the mask he’d brought back from Malachor). Sure, there had been points in her life when awkwardness was more like something she breathed than something she felt. But the last time she had felt this incredibly awkward… Probably the closest was the first few months she had spent on the _Ghost_ , what felt like a lifetime ago. But then, there had been the foul taste of paranoia clogging her mouth, the anticipation of an abandonment that never came, to break it up. Now, she just had unbroken, unremitting _awkwardness_ to contend with.

The first thing that had been done once the powers that be decided that Rau really could be trusted was that they’d given him his armor back. This had taken long enough—even with Sabine and Ezra deciding it would be better if they just didn’t mention the “threatened to tell the Empire where their base is” part of the story, Hera was angry enough about the “knocked out Ezra and Sabine and hijacked the _Phantom_ ” part of the story that it had taken a while to sell her on the idea that Rau really was on the up and up. It had taken long enough, and Rau had been without it for long enough, that Sabine would have thought he would have wanted to hold on to it.

The first thing Rau had done when the powers that be decided he could be trusted was to start making plans to visit certain far-flung Mandalorian outposts where he had contacts. It seemed a reasonable thing to do. There was a chance some of the outposts might be willing to throw their lots in with the Rebellion, and the people there would definitely respond better to Fenn Rau than they would Sabine Wren.

_“Oh, before you leave, you should know that the Empire’s put out a warrant for your arrest.”_

_“I suspected they would. I doubt that anyone where I’m going will try to turn me in, even if they don’t wish to break with the Empire.”_

_“…They’ve also put a bounty on your head.”_

_At that, he let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Oh? How much?”_

_“Enough that if your friends get hungry enough, they might just forget they’re your friends. Look, Rau; it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for me to go with you—“ for more reasons than one, several of which Sabine would rather not have to think about, let alone talk about “—but are you really sure you want to go by yourself?”_

_“You worry too much,” he said dismissively. “I know how to evade capture.”_

Yeah, Sabine would bet he did. And yet…

(Sabine couldn’t quite manage to ignore the fact that it had been not diplomacy but a massacre and a firefight that had convinced Rau to throw his lot in with the Rebellion. But she didn’t care about reasons; he was one of them now, and that _meant_ something. He was an exile, was someone who couldn’t go home, and that meant something too.)

He’d left for the first of the outposts he planned to scope out a little over a standard month ago. He’d come back late last night wearing a new set of armor, and bearing an odd request for Sabine.

For a few blissful minutes, Sabine had no idea what this was about. For a few blissful minutes, Sabine could look at Rau like he’d grown a second head and wonder why the hell he’d want to just get rid of a good set of armor, especially one that could still be worn or reforged. Though in her experience ignorance was often one of the worst dangers in the galaxy, in those few minutes, Sabine truly learned the meaning of the phrase “Ignorance is bliss.”

When those blissful minutes passed, Sabine just felt sick.

_“Okay… so… so you need me to…”_

_“I’m not asking you to_ participate _. I need someone to stand watch while I work, and there’s no one else here who…”_

_‘No one else,’ when he ought to have just said ‘no one.’ They might have both been the children of Mandalore, but they were outsiders to one another in this. Sabine didn’t know whether to feel a dull stab of pleasure, or to just feel even sicker than she already did. She nodded slowly. “I’ll see if anyone has a shovel they can let you borrow. There has to be one around here somewhere.”_

_“…………Thank you, Sabine.”_

It was morning now, early morning. There was just enough light that they could see unaided, Sabine was still shedding sleep from her bones, and the air had only just begun to lose night’s dry chill (Sabine wondered when she had become so sensitive to the cold; she noticed it less than the rest of the _Ghost’s_ crew, but just a couple of years ago she wouldn’t have noticed it at all). The krykna were, well… Sabine didn’t know if it was just the sensor marker she’d grabbed doing its work, or if this part of the wilderness just wasn’t part of their hunting grounds, or something else. It wasn’t like Rau could have just picked anywhere to stop and dig; it had to be a place where the soil was soft enough and deep enough to dig in. it was probably just dumb luck that the krykna hadn’t tried bothering them, and if it was dumb luck that there was a nearby rock about fifteen feet high for Sabine to perch on and keep watch from, it was also an unspoken source of relief for them both.

(They were both the children of Mandalore, but they were outsiders to one another in this, and there were things that were just too personal to be shared. Long shadows obscured sight, but not sound. If there was something that needed to be spoken, it was good that Sabine could sit out of earshot, if Rau spoke quietly enough.)

Funerals… Funerals were never a _comfortable_ experience, were they? Sabine could remember too-vividly the last one she had attended. She was ten years old, and it was her grandmother they sent into shadow. Her mother struggled to retain her composure, and had slapped her father’s hand away when he had tried to wrap his arm around her shoulders. Her grandmother’s bones were to be buried in the graveyard with the rest of their dead kin, but it was winter and the ground was frozen solid, so hard that it took the better part of twelve hours to dig the grave deep enough. The short day of winter ran out, the gravediggers dug under starlight, and Sabine’s mother was shaking by the end, but not from the cold. Sabine had never been able to determine what it was that made Ursa shake so, distress or rage, both or neither. If she herself had been shaking, it had been from cold and from hunger and from the empty feeling pervading her bones, and she had found some small relief leaning into her brother’s side.

Rau was having a much easier time digging out a grave than the gravediggers of nine years ago had had. Only about fifteen minutes in, and he’d already gotten further than they had in two hours. He had his back turned to Sabine, and his head bowed. She couldn’t see his face, and didn’t particularly want to.

When they had gone back to that moon of Concord Dawn, when they had found the Protectors’ base a smoking ruin, Sabine hadn’t seen any corpses. The only physical evidence of the massacre was that bloodied helmet Rau had brought back with him, and he had finally scrubbed the blood off of it this morning before they set out, so it _almost_ could have been anyone’s helmet. Somehow, she doubted highly that Saxon and his ISC goons would have thought it worth their time to give the Protectors proper funerary rites; more likely they’d just stacked the bodies up in one of the outbuildings like trash. There had been moments when Sabine had had trouble summoning _any_ coherent thought in the face of her own rising panic, but she could remember wondering if she would notice a smell, or spot an arm or a leg through a door left ajar. If she had been thinking it, there was no way Rau hadn’t been thinking it, too.

_Attacked without warning, killed without being given even a chance to negotiate or defend themselves. Killed just to lure out one man. Bodies left to rot out in the open. Killed for… Killed._

(Sabine had dreams, sometimes. Not so often now as she used to, and less vivid as memories of faces and voices started to fray around the edges. The faces and voices were different from the reality she had seen a month ago, but the themes were much the same. She wished she could forget. She hadn’t known these people, didn’t care for them as she did the family of her blood, but she couldn’t forget any of it.)

For now, they couldn’t go back to the Concord Dawn system. It was all too likely that the Empire, Mandalorian or non-Mandalorian, would be waiting for them if they thought to re-enter the system. Sabine liked to think that there would come a day when it would be safe to go back there, safe to do what needed to be done there, but for now, there was this, and it would simply have to be enough.

What were the Protectors’ funerary customs, anyways? Sabine wondered, as the sun inched a little higher in the sky, and Rau dug the proxy grave of his a little deeper. She knew they didn’t send deceased members’ corpses back to their clans, but that was about it; the Protectors were just as secretive in this regard as any clan would have been. Rau was going with burial, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. There was nothing you could do with armor that would mimic the effects of mummification or de-fleshing the bones. There were no bodies of water within two hundred miles of the base, so that was definitely out.  And the sort of fire you’d need to _warp_ high-grade beskar, let alone _melt_ it… You’d find that in a forge, and find it nowhere else, unless you wanted to shoot the beskar in question into a star, or put yourself and everyone around you at serious risk of burning to death.

 _Whatever it is, I’ll bet it calls for more than one person to perform the rites_ , Sabine mused uneasily. She turned her gaze away from the burial site, and gritted her teeth and winced as the wind blew dust into her face. Whenever her clan had held a funeral, there were eight official positions to be filled. Three were to de-flesh the bones, and three to dig the grave; one was to prepare the coffin, and the last was to act as chief mourner. The former seven could be any adult member of the clan, but the chief mourner was typically the deceased’s child, spouse, sibling or parent—the only exception was if the deceased had none of these, in which case Sabine’s mother acted as chief mourner instead.

_But now, we’ve got one gravedigger-slash-mourner, one lookout who shouldn’t even be here, and no bodies to bury, because the Empire crushes everything that isn’t loyal to it, and no one knows how to hurt Mandalorians quite like other Mandalorians._

(With everything else that had happened there, there was one thing that kept coming back to Sabine’s mind, even over the massacre:

_“Your mother is looking for you.”_

It was a lie, and a bad one, at that. It _had_ to be. It was a lie told to get Sabine to let her guard down long enough for Saxon to put a blaster bolt through her head. If her mother wanted her back, she had had years to act on that desire, and never had. But that sick lurch in her stomach when he’d said that, it kept coming back to her at odd moments. It was clinging to her even now.)

A quarter of an hour passed by. A convor wheeled in the sky overhead, letting out a single, keening cry before settling on another nearby rock formation. Sabine could almost smile as she watched the bird plump its pretty feathers and preen them, though the half-smile quivered and failed about five seconds after it crept into life. _We are one gravedigger-slash-mourner, one lookout who shouldn’t even be here, and one bird. Hope Rau doesn’t think convorees are carrion eaters; he might shoot it out of spite._

Sabine bit back a sigh, her shoulders sagging as she remembered the way Ahsoka had responded to the convorees. Though Ahsoka had only been to Chopper Base the once, she had taken a liking to Atollon’s non-lethal fauna, the convorees especially. She had said…

Sabine couldn’t remember what Ahsoka had said, not without remembering the gnawing ache of absence. She stopped trying to.

Down below, Rau had dug the grave as deep as he thought it needed to be—that or he’d hit bedrock, and simply couldn’t dig any deeper. He turned his attention to the large, cloth-wrapped bundle he had taken with them from the base, untying the knot. No easy task was that, if the curses that drifted up to Sabine’s ears were any indication, and even from up here, she could see his hands fumbling. But he got it open on his own eventually, and Sabine doubted that any help of hers would have made the task easier.

Rau laid a strip of cloth down over the soil in the grave (If he was ever to try and dig the armor back up, Sabine supposed it would go better for it to be wrapped in something). His old armor was lying in a heap on top of the cloth he’d transported it in, glinting dully in the early morning sun. He stared at it in silence for a long moment; once again, Sabine could not see his face, and was glad. Then, slowly, carefully, he laid the armor down in the grave, piece by piece. At last, he took the rest of the cloth and laid it down on top of the armor.

Packing the soil back down over the grave took about ten minutes. After that, Sabine looked away, letting the wind fill up her ears. She scanned the horizon for krykna, and saw none. _That’s weird_ , she thought dully. _Usually you can see a couple of them, even during the day_. It was just as well that the krykna weren’t around—funerals might be uncomfortable, but that didn’t mean that a gate-crasher would be welcome. But still…

“Sabine?”

Sabine would like it to be noted that she did not jump, did not flinch, and did not hunch her shoulders. Instead, she merely stared wordlessly down at Rau, who was staring back up at her.

“You can come down now,” he called out, the wind distorting his voice until Sabine couldn’t make out tone at all. “I’ve finished.”

The walk back to the base was, at first, a quiet one. Rau seemed thoroughly uninterested in talking, and Sabine felt like her skin was going to jump right off her muscles, curiosity and concern warring with the desire to just keep her mouth shut, too. The convor took off, letting out another high, piercing cry, but it soon flew out of sight and out of earshot.

He seemed remarkably calm. In a way, it was a relief—probably the only way this could have been even more awkward than it already was would have been for him to be openly grieving right in front of her. And it had been over a month; surely, he’d already taken some time to try to sort things out in his head. But still, this dry-eyed, expressionless calm…

 _He was so angry, then. Distraught, too. Definitely wasn’t thinking straight to think he could have gone to the Empire without them blowing his brains out._ And if he _had_ realized they’d probably kill him after he told them about Chopper Base, Sabine was one hundred percent sure she could happily go the rest of her life without confirmation. _That doesn’t just go away, not so quickly. I_ know _it doesn’t._

“How did the meeting go?” Sabine asked when the silence finally got to be too much to take. “Did they agree to help us?” Her voice sounded faint and brittle to her own ears; she chalked it up to the wind.

Rau grimaced. “No such luck.”

 _You got that armor from them, though,_ Sabine wanted to say, and didn’t. _That’s_ something _. They might be more open in the future._

The style of the armor was unfamiliar to Sabine, and when Rau had first shown back up last night, she hadn’t been able to tell exactly how he’d gotten it. But now, under proper light? Forged, definitely; it fit too well to be a set he had bought, or someone’s spare set he’d just been given. So they’d said no to fighting the Empire, but had let him stick around long enough to forge a new set of armor? Yes, they certainly might be more receptive in the future. Maybe, some day.

For now, Sabine couldn’t do anything about that. She focused instead on the gunmetal gray of Rau’s new armor, and tried to remember if she had _ever_ seen a Mandalorian warrior go around wearing unpainted armor.

“I’ve got paint back on the _Ghost_ , if you want it,” she offered, keeping her voice as neutral as she was able.

Rau stared at her as though trying to pick up on some hidden meaning behind her words. Upon finding none, he replied, his voice just as neutral as hers, “I think I would, actually. Thank you.” He frowned thoughtfully, and added, “And tell that astromech of yours that I want another round of cubikahd.”

Now, it was Sabine’s turn to stare. “Are you serious?” she asked incredulously. “I’d have thought you’d be sick of it after all those games in the cell block.”

“Your playing is a travesty,” he told her severely, a bit _too_ severely, in fact, if he really wanted to be taken seriously—and Sabine couldn’t help but notice that he was having to force back a smirk. “One I have every intention of correcting. If this should prove impossible, then at least you might be able to last longer than five minutes.”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “My playing’s not that bad.”

“I speak from ample experience when I say that it is.”

Sabine was getting the strong impression that this was meant as a distraction, and the reason why was the reason they were walking back home after burying a set of armor in the desert. If that was the reason… Sabine guessed she could understand it. To be perfectly honest, she could do with a distraction herself, and unfortunately, she could guess easily how much more she would have needed one in Rau’s place. _Just so long as he doesn’t start asking questions…_

“I’ll see if Chopper has any free time today,” she told him, carefully looking straight ahead. After a measured moment, Sabine added, “I should warn you that if Chopper doesn’t want to do this and I try to make him do it anyways, he’ll probably just zap us both and hide with AP-5 until the heat’s off.”

This got her a startled laugh, and Sabine was a little surprised herself when she smiled back.


End file.
